Friday, January 31, 2014

Draughts are the enemy of energy efficient houses


Unwanted draughts are the great enemy of maintaining comfortable temperature in homes.

In the winter leaky house quickly becom
e colder and in the summer it is the reverse.

So in the winter the air you have paid to warm, and used lot of energy to achieve, escapes through the almost invisible gaps, while in summer you have again expended huge amounts energy, not to mention cash, to cool the interior of your house, only to have hot air leaking in.

Melbourne’s South East Council Climate Change Alliance (SECCCA), an amalgam of eight south east municipal councils, has worked hard to educate the community, and itself, about the challenges arising from climate change.

Understanding the limits of its influence, SECCCA has focussed, primarily, on housing and so through a collaborative project has built and set up a display home, which doubles as a community centre, where people can go to learn about planning and building a low energy use house.

Beyond housing, SECCCA considers agricultural emissions, electric vehicles, public lighting, education into schools and resource efficient farming.

SECCCA’s climate change project coordinator, Daniel Pleiter, puts draught sealing at the top “must do” things when building a new home.

He has said that also of critical importance was the orientation of the house on the block, double glazing, solar energy, insulation and shading.

Mr Pleiter has argued that draught sealing for both extremes of weather is so important in terms of conserving energy and the year-round comfort for the occupants, that people should be insisting home builder give it the highest priority.

He said new style material and processes are readily available, but even if those are not used, then a tightening up of general building standards, meaning the elimination of gaps allowing the creation of draughts, would make the home more comfortable and noticeably reduce its energy us.

That lift in building standards, something he said was relatively easily achieved, although it required some training, the correct positioning of the house on the block, insulation, solar energy and shading were relatively cheap, easy to do and would have measureable impact on both comfort and cost.

Mr Pleiter said builders were the first line of attack in improving Australia’s housing stock suggesting they needed to work hard to ensure homes they built were draught proof.

Selandra Community Place is a collaborative process involving the City of Casey, Stockland, Henley Properties Group and the SECCCA.

Members of Slap Tomorrow from Shepparton, together with the City of Greater Shepparton’s Sustainability and Environmental Officer, Mr Travis Turner, recently inspected the display building and spent nearly three hours talking with Mr Pleiter.

Slap Tomorrow is advocating for a similar house to be built in Shepparton illustrating advantages and cost savings to Goulburn.

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